Posts

every few months, i subject myself to a partial episode of 60 minutes. last time i watched, i saw mike wallace getting his ass handed to him by mahmoud ahmadinejad.

tonight, i got to see george tenet fight to regain some of his dignity.

the funny thing is, i didn't believe a single thing he said, except for his description of how the rest of the bush administration suddenly developed a case of collective amnesia when it came time to appoint a recipient of blame for the invisible weapons of mass destruction.

tenet says that he hopes that history will judge him more kindly, but if i were a betting person, i'd say that his entire career is likely to be remembered for only two words. in fact, i'd say it's a slam dunk.

Dreamy and idealistic, you've created a world that is all your own.It's very likely that you've either dabbled in drugs or are naturally trippy.You are always trying to push beyond the boundaries of your culture and society.You believe that art, love, and freedom can change the world.What Art Movement Are You?

insomnia. it afflicts most people from time to time. although i haven't suffered from an intense bout for a while, i did once go for about three and a half months without getting a good night's sleep. i remember one person saying that they'd love to have that problem because they'd get so much done. i think i killed them for that. (i'm joking, as far as you know.)

insomnia is often misunderstood as simply not wanting to sleep, i.e., not getting tired. the fact is that insomniacs are frequently tired and with good reason- they aren't getting enough sleep. so rather than bouncing around at all hours, capable of anything, one becomes a bit lethargic, run-down and, what's worse, dull-witted from lack of sleep. your body ultimately doesn't care that your mind isn't getting tired and it's revenge is a sort of work-to-rule campaign.

it's also a common misconception that insomniacs don't sleep at all. the disorder is characterised by the inabil…

a friend of mine in the design field invited me to an event the other night, a benefit for the toronto fashion incubator. aside from the fact that these sorts of things appeal to that part of me which has managed to stuff two closets so full of clothing that there is imminent danger of an explosion, this particular event offered as many free samples of wine as you could stuff in your face. hmmm... clothing and free alcohol... i'm in.

now, i'm not normally intimate with "fashion" circles, although i'm aware of their existence, so this was pretty much the first time i got to observe the machinations of this world up close. and guess what? it's exactly what you'd expect. while not petite, i'm not what you'd call a heavyweight. in that room, i was something straight out of moby dick- the great white whale. everyone, men and women, looked remarkably like ambulatory clothes-hangers. most of them, including those well taller than me, were likely under a…

as you might have discerned, i like writing. not merely the activity of writing, but the end product. and as someone who likes to write herself, i like to imagine that an can appreciate the good writings of others. reading faulkner or doestoevsky thrills me to my core. but i'm also a fan of the opposite end of the spectrum. truly horrific, tortured prose is as difficult to accomplish as greatness and, let's face it, we all need the occasional laugh.

i'm not generally a fan of fantasy writing, but i think even those who enjoy it would have to admit that it's plagued with more than it's fair share of the memorably awful. (i think that this is a general problem for defined genres, which have too many conditions that must be fulfilled.)

anyway, this is all a long preamble to a very quick point. here's what maybe the best, worst piece of writing in human history. if you can find worse (that's not intentionally worse), please forward it on...

ah, so i have just returned from one of those wild excursions called business trips. for me, these normally involve locations that i would normally find frightening and several days of seclusion in a second rate hotel room, eating food that somehow manages to be both fattening and unsatisfying. and part of this trip was spent in such a location. fortunately, it also involved two other stops that were considerably less suck.

first up was a stop in washington. now, i'll just say this straight up: i like washington. i like the sheer intimidation factor created by the national mall. (albert speer used its design concepts in his plans for berlin, which is completely obvious if once you know it. don't believe me? there are giant fasces flanking the lincoln memorial. go look.) in addition, i like a city where men wear suits like they mean it, where people will meet and hold even eye contact and respond with a confident nod and where it is considered perfectly normal to eat alone.

things i'm listening to with remarkable frequency in the last couple of weeks:

pimentola/ misantropolis/ cold meat industry :: to quote stephen colbert "i called it!!!" i said the new album sounded cool (see earlier post) and it is. a bit like a more eccentric, mid-eighties era laibach, but overall, a really difficult release to describe with any accuracy. check out the sound bites on their brilliant web site.

hentai/ toy factory/ vital :: yeah, ok, i know what hentai "really" is, haha. but the album is excellent, creepy... well, check out my full review of the album a couple of posts back.

ait!/ romanticismo oltranzista/ punch records :: i have no idea what's in the water in italy and spain, but i'd like to find out. all of a sudden, there seems to be a an entire extended family of bands whose music is either the soundtrack to a bizarre cabaret or the music you hear on the elevators in hell. central to the scene is the gentleman who records as ait! (…

one of the reasons i love being in a larger city is because of the diversity of cultures around me. being the offspring of virtually every celtic tribe imaginable doesn't give me the widest variety in my own family. but there are times when i am decidedly so far across the cultural divide that i can't see the other side.

for instance, the united jewish appeal has recently launched a media campaign featuring images of dog tags belonging to three israeli soldiers who were kidnapped, one into gaza, two into lebanon, last year. the line they are using as a catch phrase for this campaign is "we don't leave our sons behind". yeah, we noticed that.

suddenly, toronto is polluted with images of dog tags, exhorting people to support the campaign to free the soldiers. this might have been a laudable goal in itself, if it had been voiced when the soldiers were first kidnapped. hell, it's a laudable goal now to remind people that those young men are still missing. but i…